After Thursday night’s tough loss 1–0 to the top ranked Montreal Carabins overtime, the Varsity Blues were looking to keep their chances of competing for a medal at the national championship alive, which they did with a 5–4 shootout win against the UBC Thunderbirds.
From the beginning of the game, the Blues were communicating well passing a lot, and catching all of each other’s passes. Both teams looked aggressive from the start, pushing each other’s players whenever they got close. The first penalty was called against UBC’s Emily O’Neil for checking, 1:43 into the game, followed shortly by an interference call against Blues’ Ragan Danford.
U of T’s defense was solid for the first period, getting their sticks in the way of the Thunderbirds’ shots. At 8:58 U of T’s offense kicked in with fourth-year Marlie McLaughlin scoring the first goal of the game with assists by Jacqueline Scheffel and Kelly O’Hanlon. The goal put the Blues in a more comfortable position in the game, but did not over-excite them, and they stayed focused, lead by head coach Vicky Sunohara who stayed neutral behind the bench all period. Their focus through the rest of the period allowed them to keep the score at 1-0 heading into the second period.
In the second, the Thunderbirds were spreading around the ice more than in the first period. The play moved back and forth until U of T’s Sonja Weidenfelder scored, assisted by Scheffel and Callie Bazak, to add to the Blues lead.
Thunderbirds defender Sarah Casorso scored the first goal of the game for UBC in the second, assisted by rookie Nicole Saxvik, who was called for a penalty less than two minutes later for checking to the head.
At the beginning of the third, once again on a Thunderbirds powerplay, Casorso, assisted by Saxvik and Samantha Langford, scored the tying goal.
The game stayed tied for almost 12 minutes, until the Blues’ Scheffel scored, assisted by rookie Taylor Day, to put Toronto ahead of the Thunderbirds once again. The back and forth game continued, and on a UBC powerplay 16:38 minutes into the period, Chanakos scored another goal, with assists by Saxvik and Christi Capozzi, to tie the game again. Soon after, UBC put themselves ahead of the Blues for the first time in the game with a goal by Genevieve Carpenter-Boesch, assisted again by Capozzi.
Sunohara called for a 30 second time out to discuss the last 1:15 with her team. UBC’s co-captain Kaitlin Imai was called for cross checking at 18:55, giving U of T a powerplay. Taylor Day scored the tying goal, assisted by Scheffel, with 34 seconds left in the period. The goal gave the Blues new-found momentum heading into overtime. “She [Sunohara] basically told us to just keep playing how we were all game, keep it simple, play our game. Just hard working pucks to the net and things will happen, and we finally got the right bounces,” Blues team captain Kelly O’Hanlon explained.
Toronto outshot UBC in overtime 7–5, but neither team was able to capitalize. During the first three periods, five of the eight goals were scored on powerplays, so the lack of penalties in this period made it tougher for either team to score, and neither did.
“Shootouts are my favourite thing. I play it like a game, I guess, make the play or make first move, and just be calm and cool,” Blues goalie Nicole Kesteris tells.
In the shootout, Blues captain O’Hanlon scored on her opportunity, skating to her left of the net to trick the goalie, which was the first shot, and goal of the shootout. Courtney Tougas and Callie Bazak, the other two Blues shooters both had their shots blocked. Tatiana Rafter, Kaitlin Imai, and Sarah Casorso took the shots for the Thunderbirds, but all of their shots were saved by Kesteris, allowing the Blues to win 5–-4, leading them into Sunday’s game to face the StFX X-Women for bronze.
“At the beginning [of the game] I was kind of still trying to get comfortable with the pace of the game, but towards the middle and the end I really felt like the game was in control. It could have gone either way really,” said Kesteris.
“[Kesteris is] unbelievable. Put in a tough situation, she’s our number one goalie, we’re starting her,” said Sunohara. “She has just been so consistent, and so strong, and not only is she stopping the pucks, she comes over to the bench and she’s talking and being positive to the team, and being that pep up player as well. Nicole’s doing it all, and she deserved the win tonight.”
UBC head coach Graham Thomas was disappointed with his team’s performance throughout the game. “We battled back tonight but Toronto worked really hard and wanted it more than us. We weren’t playing desperate enough and our backs are against the wall now. We have to rebound and refocus against Montreal.”
“We had the lead for the majority of the game, so that definitely helps to score the first goal — gets your momentum going, gets everybody excited,” said O’Hanlon. “We ran into some trouble, we got behind in the third period but that late period goal just pumped us up and that kept us going through the overtime period.”
U of T’s second year forward Scheffel had a hand in every Blues goal in regulation time,with one goal and three assists. “She’s a kid that sometimes we’ve got to tell her to settle down. She’s consistently working hard, doing whatever it takes. It’s good that her hard work’s finally paying off on the scoreboard,” said Sunohara.
“I think we played unbelievable. There were ups and downs but we came back. I had a frustrating game yesterday so I just played as hard as I could and good things came from it,” Scheffel explained.
The Blues came into the tournament this weekend as underdogs, but with Thursday night’s close game, and Friday night’s win against UBC, the Varsity Blues have proven that they deserve to be in the national championships.
“I just think that they’re believing, and they’re believing in themselves and they’re believing in each other, and we all knew that anything can happen, and we didn’t even so much focus on the other teams, we didn’t focus on watching other teams video. We focused on ourselves and what we can control and what we can do. We kept it simple, and when they buy in, we’re successful,” Sunohara said. “It’s not easy, no team’s going to give up, it’s obvious, but we came out on the winning end tonight.”
